


Eleven Years

by myadamantiumheart



Category: Avengers
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-07
Updated: 2012-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-30 18:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myadamantiumheart/pseuds/myadamantiumheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleven years of Pepper Potts' love life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eleven Years

Seventeen years old, and Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts is standing behind the desk of the Potts’ bookshop, ringing up purchases for the woman who always buys petunias from the Foster nursery. She’s buying gardening books- no surprise. The summer is hot outside, the bookstore cool and dim with lamps set around the stacks, and the sun shines dandelion bright in the large storefront windows. 

 

Seventeen years old, and Pepper is left with a high school diploma, a book store, and her whole life ahead of her. Her sister lives with their grandmother two towns inland, her mother with an aunt in the big cities on the other coast, and Pepper’s been pressed into service here. She’s tall against the stacks, the top of her head frosted with fiery waves that tip the top shelf of each bookcase, and thin as a sylph that flits through the stacks like they’re her personal forest. Delicate fingers tap across the ancient typewriter on the counter when she has to write out a flyer for the store, across the keys of the register and her laptop.

Words are Pepper’s magic, the kind she can only dream of from the stories she’s read. She’s not a merrow- not like Darcy, and she’s watched her chestnut-haired friend struggle with the magic born to her, Darcy’s four male companions revolving around her with the visible spark of magic between them to anyone who cared to look close. And Pepper knew she never had a chance at that- that kind of connection was far beyond her reach. She wasn’t sure she’d even wanted it even if she had the option.

 

Sixteen years old, the year before, and Pepper Potts goes on a few quiet dates with Phil Coulson. He’s professional, he’s going places, and he sees something in her that Pepper’s never had anyone notice. Phil notices that she’s smart, knows that she could run far from this small town with it. He romances her to the tune of intellectual curiosity, geraniums left on the windowsill of the apartment above the bookshop and almond horns in a Tupperware. There are long nights with the window open and spring breeze floating in- the shine and sparkle of prom and the morning afterwards, laughing and barely decent on her gingham bedspread. Sixteen years old with her nearly deaf grandmother making them pancakes on the weekend, when Phil asks her to run away with him.

I’m going to college, he tells her. University in the big city, far away from Tower’s Point Station, far from the waves and the bookshop and the people who’ve known Pepper and Phil all their lives. You’re smart enough to get in, too, Phil says, but Pepper’s eyes are green and blue and full of brine when he leaves alone a month later, three days after graduation. Her grandmother and her sister Juliet move to a town fifty three minutes away- Phil leaves for university, leaves her with geraniums in her hair and the apron from her bookshop uniform slung over her arm, a kiss on her cheek and a promise to write as he drives away.

He does write- he still writes, ever week, without fail, but he doesn’t love her the same any more. He saw that future in her, and Pepper sometimes thinks that he fell in love with her future before he fell for her present. Seven years later, with her weekly letter, Pepper will get an invitation to Phil’s wedding, a fellow professor at the prestigious university he now teaches at, Dr. Hill. She’ll go in her Sunday best, and it’s there she’ll realize how happy she is that Phil was the one who ended up breaking out.

 

Eighteen years old, and Pepper is still running the bookstore. She has a brief tryst with Tony- everyone knew it was coming, Pepper and her wayward instinct to protect the boy she’d tutored in English. They have a wild few weeks, but it doesn’t last, and soon they’re back to the close platonic relationship they had before. (Tony asks her, halfway through, desperate and half asleep, if she thinks he’ll ever have a chance at happiness- asks her if she thinks he’ll end up like his father. He asks her if she thinks he’ll let Darcy fall into the waves the way Maria had, and that’s when Pepper knows it’s hopeless, that she’ll never have Tony the way Darcy will, the way Thor will, the way Steve will, the way Loki will.)

 

Twenty years old, and Pepper finally manages to extinguish the torch she’d carried for Tony, for Phil, all these years, with the overwhelmingly cheerful company of Happy Hogan. It doesn’t last either- in fact; it’s even shorter than the fling with Tony, because Happy’s a captain of a ship that passes through for three short days. He treats her like porcelain, rough fingers on her hips and running through her hair. A daisy on the door step of the bookstore the afternoon he leaves, and she sees him off with a kiss on the cheek. He writes too, if less frequently than Phil, but, like Phil, it’s not something that Pepper will ever try to resuscitate.

Pepper is alone for a long time. Not alone, truly, per say- but alone in the romantic sense. She runs the bookstore alone, hops over to the library next door to see Natasha for coffee thrice a week, and she, Jane, Natasha, and Darcy meet for lunch every week at the soda counter of the Barton General Store, flirting with Clint as he pours their egg creams and milkshakes.

And she runs the bookstore some more- she receives orders, filing them away, sells the books, repeats the cycle. For a while, she sells bookmarks with pressed flowers on them that the ladies in the quilt club made. Then, it’s greeting cards from a printing company in the town where Juliet and her grandmother live. The spot beside the register changes products thirty-four times before another man comes into Pepper’s life.

 

Twenty-six, and Pepper goes into the Rogers bakery for a croissant. She’s late for work, but she doesn’t care very much because it’s Monday morning and nobody’s going to urgently need a book.

“One croissant, please,” she says absently, looking through the case, not quite paying attention to the fact that it’s not Steve behind the counter at the moment. The man behind the counter hands her the croissant and the tab, and she pays without much thought before realizing that she’s not holding a plain croissant.

“This is almond-“ she says, blinking at Bucky Barnes across the smooth marble bakery counter.

“You always seemed like a marzipan kind of gal,” he drawls, smiling dark at her, and she flushes a little.

“I am,” Pepper admits, taking a bite of the croissant and a small, hesitant smile shooting his way.

Twenty-six, and Pepper develops an incurable addiction to almond croissants.

 

Twenty-seven, and James Buchanan Barnes is an incorrigible flirt. He stops by the bookshop on his coffee breaks, sprawling himself down across the second computer chair behind the big counter of the bookstore and smiling that lazy, dark smile at her. Laughing that husky laugh and dropping sweet peas into a vase beside the cash register when he thinks she isn’t looking. It’s not very fair to Pepper, who sits there pink and frustrated by his lingering looks, tries to flirt back. But that’s just how Bucky is- he flirts with her, he flirts with Steve, he flirts with Clint and Natasha and also Mrs. Bettelheim from the shop two doors down. So she tries not to think to much of it, even when he wakes her up with coffee during her two in the afternoon slump, or brings her an almond croissant for breakfast. She steadfastly ignores his hand on her lower back, because he’s not going to follow it up with a dip-and-kiss worthy of the old films like she wishes he would.

Twenty-seven years old, and Pepper is sexually frustrated by the impossibly attractive Bucky.

 

Twenty-eight, and Pepper’s tired of waiting. She’s fond of the flirtation from Bucky, but he never makes a move, and she’s beginning to wonder if he’s not caught up on someone else and simply flirting with her to be polite.

 

Twenty-eight-and-a-half years old, and Pepper goes on a date with Clint Barton to the pizza parlor. He’s great company, funny as hell, and she tries not to think about how everything attractive about him is something she was first attracted to in Bucky. And then her bluegreenbrine eyes meet his sky gaze as he walks into the pizza parlor, and she understands. Clint’s great company, funny as hell, and she resolves to buy him a drink at the bar because he sees the look on Bucky’s face too and shoves her off her stool towards him.

“’I’ve got the tab,” he says, grinning over at her. Bucky walks out, storm clouds across his expression, and Clint nudges her towards the door again. “And you’ve got a disgruntled love to catch.”

Pepper finds him halfway down the street, running as fast as she can in her heels, nearly tackling him as she skids on a puddle.

“Watch it, there,” he says, half amused and half put off, still, and she leans up to wrap her arms around his neck, kiss him deep and silent and put that drawling rasp to rest.

“I didn’t think you meant it,” she admits, later, in the dark, sprawled across his chest on her same old gingham duvet. His fingers run across her hip and his lips are on her cheek as he laughs, heavy and deep and happy.

“I did,” he informs her, and Pepper slaps his arm, feeling that laugh in the pit of her stomach, curled up and orange like poppies, happy and nostalgic and fairly bursting of the future.

 

Twenty-eight-and-a-half-years old, and Pepper Potts has found a man she wants to stay. 


End file.
